


The Captain and the Oracle

by Smaragdina



Category: Cinders
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:17:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perrault has many questions. Ghede is not the most direct in answering them. A series of scenes in their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Captain and the Oracle

“Why?” is one of the first things he asks.

Ghede snorts. “ _Why_ is hardly a question, Captain.”

Perrault blows out a slow breath that buys himself time to think. He almost wishes that he could take it back, but the question – _seed_ of a question – is already said and hanging in the heat-dark air between them. He watches her peel away the old bandage, careful. “Why did you save me?”

She rocks back on her heels, rolls her eyes. “Isn’t _why not_ the thing you really want to ask?”

“No.” Once again, it’s out of his mouth before he realizes that it’s a mistake.

Ghede laughs. It’s a sharp sound, with no amusement behind it, and Perrault winces as she gets to her feet and vanishes into the back of her shop behind him. “I apologize,” he calls. He twists to look toward her and catches himself with a curse. The stitches running down his side are neat and precise and numerous, dark black in the gloom of the little shop; he wonders what they will look like in the sunlight. “I did not mean to insult you – I only – you are quite clearly a capable woman. Clever. You are not the type to do something for free, and…the things they say about you –”

“They say many things about me,” Ghede says from somewhere behind him. There is a stern note in her voice. “That does not meant those things are true.” She walks back around, skull on her face distorting itself into a faint smile. “You know the power of rumors, Captain. There are many that swirl about the King, for example.”

“Some of those are true,” Perrault grumbles. “The bad ones.”

No sooner has he said it than he realizes it is his third mistake in short order, and he groans and rubs a hand over his face as Ghede gives a bark of a laugh. Give him another den of bandits any day; he’s no _good_ at this pointed casual conversation. He resolves to stop talking.

Ghede’s fingers are careful and clever as they smooth a bitter-smelling paste down the length of his stitches. The paste is cold and stings only a little, smelling bitter. Her hands are warmer than they have any right to be. “I’d be a miserable sort of woman if I left you to die,” she says, conversational.

“I only meant –“ Perrault sighs. He’s bad at this _not talking_ thing. He tries again, no words, just a pointed tap on the coin purse on his hip so she can hear it jingle.

Ghede shakes her head as she begins smoothing a fresh bandage over his skin. He hold scrupulously still. “Who says I’m doing this for free? Perhaps I want rumors like the hint of one you let slip about the King. Or your good word the next time the townsfolk come barging over here with torches and pitchforks. There are many things I could want from you other than your coin.”

“And?”

He yelps as she taps her nail against the top stitch before pressing the edge of the bandage over it. “I want you to come see me tomorrow to get this changed. No training for a week. Ah – none,” she meets his eyes, and they are stern. “None. And none of that either, Captain.” She slaps away his hand as he goes for his purse.

Perrault matches her gaze as he reaches for his shirt. “I’ll pay you when I’m healed.” It is not a question.

“You can pay me when you’re healed. If that is what you wish to pay.”

*****

The second question comes six days later, after no visits to Ghede, after an afternoon practice session in the palace courtyard that had begun with him eager to get back in shape with the other guards and that had ended with him gasping as spring rain fell ice-cold on his too-hot skin.

It takes Perrault a minute to overcome his shock and ask it.

_“Why am I tied up?!”_

“Because this is going to hurt like you wouldn’t believe.”

Ghede appears – no, _looms_ over him, and Perrault recoils, as he had when he first saw her in the woods, from the white glow of her skeletal face. Her skin is dark enough to fade into the shadows behind her; it is a _skeleton_ standing over him. He remembers the skulls he’s seen in her shop before, the charms made of feathers and human fingerbones, and he tugs hard against the restraints.

Tied at his wrists and ankles. Leather.

She’s tied him up with his own _belts._

Perrault laughs, weakly, because the alternative is to scream. His skin is overheated and it has to be a spell she’s cast on him, it must be, there’s no explanation otherwise for the way he’s shivering. “Y-you are a singularly sick woman, you know that?”

 “And you are a horrible idiot of a patient. Bite this.”

Something is shoved in his mouth – it _can’t_ be another of his belts – and he watches in horror as the skeleton picks up a knife (to cut off the bandage, it has to be to cut off the  bandage -!) and a vial of something clear and bright. In his fevered vision, it burns like white fire.

It burns when it hits his skin, too, though less poetic.

Her voice is rich and steady as it rolls over him in a chant, over and over, in a language he doesn’t know, and then in a voice that is not quite hers, as the fire eats its way past his skin and ribs and the shadows dance amidst the rafters until he passes out once more.

*****

“Can I be untied now?”

“No.”

“This is entirely unnecessary.”

“Who are you to judge?” Ghede stands in the doorway. Her hand is on her hip. Her paint is gone, and without it she looks far more ordinary. He has learned that under the paint there are freckles that spatter across her nose and cheeks like constellations, only visible when her face is close to his. “Perhaps I like having a shirtless Captain of the Guard tied up in the back of my shop.”

Perrault rolls his eyes rather than blush. “My fever is definitely broken,” he protests. “It broke yesterday, if I’m any judge –”

“Aren’t you the same man who _judged_ it prudent to train in the rain with an infected wound?”

Now he blushes. He can feel the tips of his ears turn red. “ _Ghede_.”

“I’m not hearing a coherent argument.”

She vanishes into another of the innumerable corners of her shop. He can still here her rummaging around, though. If she goes he will be left alone with only the masks and chalk drawings on the walls for company (a cross, a serpent, a tree made out of hands and faces), and so he raises his voice and asks the first thing that comes to mind. “What kind of name is Ghede, anyway?”

“Mine.”

He tries again. “It is certainly unusual, though. You’ll have to give me that.”

“You seem to like it well enough, as often as you say it.” She appears again, and she is grinning. “I’ve not heard you complain.”

He blushes clear down to his _chest._

Ghede walks up to him. _Walks_ , no – he has seen  women move their hips like that, occasionally, women who would go on to become the King’s mistresses and cause him all sorts of headaches as they dodged patrols in the middle of the night. But the way they move is stiff and deliberate and practiced, trained, something akin to a hunter’s prowl. This is simply the way Ghede moves all the time. It seems utterly natural and necessary for her to swish her skirts around her legs like that. Practical. He does not realize that he has been staring until the bed depresses as she sits.

“It’s my name,” she says with a shrug. Her hands spider up the length of his scar. Healer’s hands, this time, feeling the temperature of his skin. “Or near enough. I’ve made it mine. There’s no one in this backwards little town who knows enough to complain.” He watches the constellations of freckles flicker across her face as she smiles. “It’s an old name.”

 _How old?_ Perrault wants to ask. _How old are you?_ But he knows that she would turn that around and comment upon the traces of grey in his hair, and so he tries again. “What’s it mean?”

“A lot of things.” The smile widens to a grin as her fingers tip-toe over the marks where his stitches were  until yesterday. Her teeth are white in the constant dark. “Death, for one.”

Perrault shifts away, trying for a moment to ignore said fingers. “Why do you wear that paint, anyway?”

“Do you want to know, or do you want to let me finish?”

“And then untie me?”

“And then untie you. You’re free to go, good Captain.”

 “Death,” Perrault prompts, after a moment, “and?”

“Humor. The joy that gets you through pain.” Her fingers have made their way all the way up to the top of his scar and are now making their way back down. They will end somewhere above his hip. He is _not_ fevered, the room is simply more stuffy than it has right to be. And Ghede is still talking. “The joy of laughing death in the face, of living. Survival.”

Perrault looks down the length of the pale scar spidering down the length of his side to her hand, stopped and splayed just above his hipbone. “Death and life and humor,” he recites. “Quite – quite the name.” His unused shoulders crack as he shifts on the bed. “And?”

“Sex,” she says, offhand.

“…Ah.”

*****

“What are we?”

The fourth question he asks her comes in the corner of the market on a sunny day, as the townsfolk swirl away and disperse around them. He’d talked down the owners of a sick horse and the crowd that came with them – he could have sent a man of lower rank to do it instead, true, it’s not as if the guard lacks for duties between wars, but he’d done it himself because…Perrault cannot quite let himself finish the thought. _Because._

But Ghede had marched off the moment he’d finished, and he’d had to follow the bright colors of her skirts into a shady corner and lay a hand on her shoulder to get her to turn.

Now, he almost regrets it; the lines of her paint are solid white on her face, as stark and merciless as her eyes set against them. Perrault clears his throat, does not retreat, and asks it again, quieter. “What are we?”

“That’s a large and philosophical question.”

“You know what I mean.” He takes a step back, letting his hand fall. His eyes are narrow. “Us. This. I stopped those people from attacking  you –”

“ – As is your duty –”

“- And you barely glance at me.”

Ghede has crossed her arms over her not-insubstantial breasts. “You are one of the very few honorable men in this town,” she says, voice soft and plain. “Do you really need the rumors I would bring to your reputation?”

“But those rumors are not _true_.” He sets his jaw and tamps down on the memory of the skulls in her shop, the shifting shadows, the fever-dream he’d had of her chanting over him in a voice that was _not her own_. “You are _not_ a witch, what those men just said in the market wasn’t –”

“Truth doesn’t matter, only what people believe to be true. You’re a fool to think otherwise.” Ghede’s lips twitch. “A horrible idiot of a patient. What do you _want_ , Perrault?”

“Not this!” He waves his hand. The gesture is violent and takes in the market, the wall of the tavern behind her, and her. “This –pretending that we’re no more than acquaintances – if we’re seeing each other at night then we ought to be able to see each other in the day as well! I want to be able to take you to the tavern, to –” His hand falls with a frustrated noise that is almost a growl. “I’m no good at this sneaking and lying.”

Ghede watches him.

Perrault takes a step back, and then another, half-turning away from her and toward the bright and safe colors of the market. His hand curls into a fist. There are scars on his knuckles, raised and jagged from his trade. _That_ is the world he knows. Life at the end of a sword. Straightforward.

Compared to the darkness and bones on the skin of the woman behind him, running a sword through a man is _easy._

“The Captain of the Guard and the Witch,” he laughs, shaking his head. Dragging Ghede into the light will destroy his reputation, yes, but the alternative…

Ghede’s arms are crossed and her paint is white on her dark skin, loud, the colors of her skirts loud and other against the pale cobbled walls (and he wonders, with not a small shiver of superstitious fear, if spurning her would cause her to destroy _him_ ), and he lifts her chin and asks a question that is no less pointed for not being spoken aloud.

_Am I worth it?_

The answer, for a woman like her, is of course _yes_ ; but he is not that man.

“Wrong question,” Perrault mutters.

And he walks away before she can respond.

*****

“What do you broker with?”

“You are a master,” Ghede mutters as she dips her fingers into the pot of white paint, “of asking general questions.”

Even at night, the back room of her little shop is stifling in the summer. The shadows and the air are thick. Perrault had promised himself that he would not be back here, not ever, (and certainly not after dark), but the King has called for him to raise a force to put down rebels raiding at the border. It is likely the last group of rebels left, and it is likely the King’s last little war as well, old as he is; but the scars on Perrault’s side still ache in the cold and the rain, and it does not feel right to march off to what might be his death in the morning without…

Well.

Whatever this is.

It is _not_ saying goodbye to the woman he loves. Because she is not, and he does not truly believe he will die. But there are questions he has forgotten to ask, important ones, even if this room with skulls and odd-color candles on the walls is not the place to ask them.

Perrault watches Ghede smooth the painted cheekbone of a skull across her own, and he tries to remember what they are.

“Your power,” he manages at last.

“I have none,” Ghede murmurs. “Only an old woman’s cleverness. You know this.”

“And you know that truth and what people _believe_ to be true are different things.”

She laughs. Her fingers waver as she paints the hollow of her eye, and she wipes the white away with the pad of her thumb and tries again. “It’s nice to see that _someone’s_ been listening in this town.”

“Then what’s all this?” he asks, waving his hands at the dark around them. “The bones, the masks, the chants and charms –”

“Perhaps it’s to frighten superstitious townsfolk.”

“ _Ghede_.” His tone is sharp and when  she does not respond he takes her by the shoulder and turns her around, stares into her face that is half painted skull and half her own. “If there’s one thing I know you _don’t_ want, it’s for people to be frightened of you.”

Ghede’s mouth curves up in a smile that holds no joy and she reaches out, wipes the excess paint from her fingers on his cheek. A white smear. It’s shockingly cold on his skin and he thinks of charms and curses for only an instant. “Why did you come?” she asks.

“That’s not an answer.”

“All you do is ask. I’m owed some answers of my own.”

He finds that they are close enough that he can read each and every constellation of freckles on the unpainted half of her face. He finds, to some surprise, that this is because she has risen on her toes and his face is less than inches from her own. Her paint is white. Her skin is dark. Her eyes are darker. They are not hollow mirrors like the women he sees at court, but this is the only thought Perrault has time for before she asks him again. Quiet. “Why did you come?”

“Your power –”

He finds that her lips are warm and lush and, as ever, startlingly practiced for a woman all on her own. And as ever he does not quite try or _want_ to pull away – he only speaks muffled against her skin. “It’s not the –” His brain trips over the term in a way that surely has nothing to do with the swell of her breasts against his chest. “The – ones that can’t be found –”

Childhood term. Silly. What is she doing to him?

Ghede gives a laugh, light and sharp. She begins undoing his belts by feel. “Don’t insult me, Perrault. Please.”

“But –”

“The things I deal with are far more _fair_ ,” she says, and on the last she pushes him into the bed.

It’s a blur after that; but then, it always has been, here in the dark here where nothing seems real, where the light is the same regardless of the time of day and the masks that line the walls surely come from a world across the sea. With the crossroads in white chalk over the bed.  Perrault considers leaving for an instant before he realizes he doesn’t _want_ to. He kisses her instead, sloppy, imprecise, smearing paint. Chalky and bitter-tasting. He tongues at a fleck of it that she’s left on his lower lip and helps her with his belts.

 “Is this why you came?” Ghede asks, a laugh in her voice, as he turns her over and presses her down and peels the layers of clothing from her, musses the half-dry lines of paint she’s drawn on her hands and arms and throat. It is not so much a skeleton now as a blur and Perrault sets to blurring it further, mouth on her neck and her collarbone and trailing down to her breasts. He can feel the laugh, and he smiles. “No,” he murmurs, before a kiss, and he is not entirely sure if what he really means is _yes_.

“Your power –” he tries again, when he is somewhere down near her waist.

“Ask me something better,” Ghede chuckles, breathless. Perrault gives a growl of a noise. He skates his mouth over her stomach, the curve of her hip. As always he searches for scars, for the marks of a child, for _anything_ to speak of a former life and to tell him what made her this way. This. _Her_. But there is nothing (or nothing that his untrained eyes can see); only the minor blemishes that mark a difficult life, but nothing to tell a _story_. Just her skin, and her pulse skipping under his lips, the taste of her paint in his mouth.

When he parts her legs he kisses _where are you from?_ against her thigh, and when he licks his tongue against her he holds _what is your real name?_ along with his breath; and when she gives a delighted laugh that ends in a moan and arches on the bed, curls her fingers through his hair and leaves it streaked with white, it is _why do you do this?_ and _are you a witch?_ and _what do you want from me?_  that he breathes against her as he suckles and nips and until she cants her hips against him and shudders and cries out. And when he pulls away and moves up the length of her body, the taste on his lips is not just her skeleton paint but also _her_.

Later, much later, they lie entwined and sated, and the paint smeared over Ghede’s body has no design at all. A cock crows somewhere outside and Perrault grumbles and sits up with a wince, Ghede’s hand dropping from where it had been running along his scar. He stares up at the ceiling as if he can look through the shadows to see the sunrise.

“I’m marching off to war in the morning,” he sighs. “Well. Now.” His throat works as he looks at the crossroads on the wall. “This is…the last time, I think.”

“The last time,” Ghede agrees.

She does not sound sad. He does not know what she sounds like.

Perrault returns to her, cups her cheeks and kisses her slow and careful, thumb along the line of white that had been so solid when they began. “Why do you wear a mask?” he asks.

And Ghede touches the same spot on his face. “Why don’t you?”


End file.
